How to reconcile renewable energy and agricultural production in a drying world

Abstract

Societal Impact StatementRenewable energies such as photovoltaics can mitigate climate change by replacing fossil fuels, but they will compete with other forms of land use when implemented in open space. Agrivoltaics provide a promising approach to reconciling food and energy needs by allowing for agricultural and electrical power production on the same area of land. Agrivoltaics have a high potential to attenuate negative effects of drought on crop growth and, thus, can help to increase resilience of agricultural production under increasingly variable environmental conditions. This drought attenuation potential will be especially relevant for regions where drought and population growth co‐occur.SummaryWater scarcity is threatening food security and other, plant‐related ecosystem services. Renewable energy production provides a sustainable strategy to replace fossil fuel and, by this, mitigate climate change. However, common forms of renewable energy production such as photovoltaics in open space directly compete with agriculture. Agrivoltaics are proposed as a promising technology to reconcile food and energy needs by allowing for agricultural and electrical power production on the same area of land. However, general understanding of the potential of agrivoltaics to facilitate crop yield under changing climatic conditions is lacking. In this study we provide an overview on the effects of agrivoltaics on microclimate and crop growth and yields. We furthermore quantify the global potential of agrivoltaics to attenuate drought effects on crops and develop a conceptual framework for evaluating interactions between solar power and agricultural production under changing climatic conditions. Generally, shading by agrivoltaics will reduce yield in comparison to maximum possible yield under unshaded, well‐watered conditions but can reduce interannual variation in yields caused by drought, thus, increase resilience of agricultural production. This drought attenuation potential of agrivoltaics seems to be especially promising in the drought prone regions of the world. Land use efficiency of agrivoltaic systems is directly linked the degree of crop shading which covaries with the drought attenuation potential but will ultimately be guided by political decisions on how to weight energy production vs. food security. The latter depends on economic, societal and ecological aspects related to the implementation of agrivoltaics.

Conservation agrivoltaics for sustainable food‐energy production

“…Utility-scale solar energy deployment, however, competes with food production and often reduces biodiversity (Allardyce et al, 2017;Barron-Gafford et al, 2016;Böhm et al, 2022). In this context, AV reduces the competition for land resources and with thoughtful management can enhance biodiversity compared with PV alone (Amaducci et al, 2018;Barron-Gafford et al, 2019;Feuerbacher et al, 2021;Laub et al, 2022;Schweiger & Pataczek, 2023;Weselek, Bauerle, Hartung, et al, 2021). Further, AV consistently increases the efficiency of land use or land productivity with an average land equivalent ratio (LER).…”

Fruit Crop Species with Agrivoltaic Systems: A Critical Review

“…Furthermore, careful consideration must be given to the panel-induced heterogeneity of the moisture distribution in the soil, an aspect that requires further investigations since it is typically a strong predictor of productivity [22]. In terms of evapotranspiration, a reduction in atmospheric water demand has recently been reported, even in years with low precipitation [62]. Similarly, a model evaluation for arid and semi-arid environments predicted a reduction in crop water consumption by 30-40% for static arrays with a 50% shading rate [63].…”

Effects of the Agrivoltaic System on Crop Production: The Case of Tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L.)

“…In terms of food production, SAS could offer advantages for certain crops harvested for leaves, stems, or roots [28]. For example, studies have confirmed that the shade cast by PV panels can increase edible biomass production in chicory and lettuce [20,21,31].…”